


To Err Is

by yorsminroud



Category: Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24863632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorsminroud/pseuds/yorsminroud
Summary: A Terminator: Dark Fate fanfic. In which Sarah Connor, after twenty years of futilely hunting her son's killer, finally throws in the towel.Until the killer himself shows up on her doorstep with just one question:"Why haven't you been answering my text messages?"
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	To Err Is

_March 21, 2019_

My name is Sarah Connor.

Twenty-eight years ago my son was shot dead on the Guatemala beach.

For twenty of those years, I hunted his killer – a machine from a future that will never take place, a single-minded animal designed, built and programmed solely to kill my little boy. I am wanted in forty-nine U.S. states and three countries. For a decade I had a single purpose, five identities, and no home.

I got tired, you understand? Fuck off, will you? I'm tired.

For all I know, the Terminator lay itself down and rusted in the sea. Perhaps it, like me, lost any real reason to live when it killed John. At any rate I have never been able to find it. And so in 2011 I sold my guns and shredded my IDs and I called in six favors and came away with enough money to buy a shotgun house in New Orleans.

I work as a waitress now; it's the only thing I ever learned how to do besides kill. There are no weapons in my home. I don't even own a kitchen knife. Hell, I don't even keep Advil in the medicine cabinet.

But since I retired, I've been receiving anonymous text messages, telling me where Terminators are entering our timeline. Telling me how to kill them. The second time I got one, I did I visit the site. Just to see if they were real, you understand. The location was in Piscataway, New Jersey. And the alert was real all right; I saw ice, electric shocks, the works. The future’s building Terminators subtler now. This one was a slim man, Mexican maybe, with charming, hard black eyes.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching me, to see if I could find my secret correspondent. But no one was there, so I drove back to New Orleans. Who knows who the Terminator in Piscataway killed? Who cares? It wasn't John. John is already dead.

* * *

_March 22, 2019_

I can't fucking believe I got rid of all my weapons. What kind of a fucking amateur am I, huh? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

The Terminator came to my house today. Showed up right on my splintered whitewashed doorstep, and I couldn't do a goddamn thing to him.

I tried, of course. Threw myself on him, tried to strangle him like an idiot. He plucked me off him like a piece of lint and dangled me patiently by the scruff of my pink waitressing uniform. "Nice color," he said, in his dumbass Austrian accent. Why'd Skynet give him that stupid-ass accent? I managed to scratch out part of his fake eyeball while he carried me inside. It was jellylike, like a real eyeball. Took me ages to get it out from under my fingernails afterward. I kicked like crazy the whole time, stubbed my toe on his stupid fucking endoskeleton.

Inside, he put me down and said, while I rummaged frantically through the kitchen drawers for a knife, "Why haven't you been answering my text messages?"

"What the fuck are you on about?"

"My text messages," he repeated, imperturbably. "With the coordinates of materializing Terminators. You have not visited a site since 2012."

"Have you been _tracking_ me?"

"Yes," said the Terminator. "What are you doing, Sarah Connor?"

I was shaking by now. I wanted a drink. "I'm living. Unlike my son, _who you killed_. Get out of my fucking house. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get o–”

"You are not living. You have no purpose. That is why I have been sending you those messages. To give you a purpose. A reason to live, after John."

"Don't you dare say his name."

Again the Terminator asked, "Why haven't you been answering my text messages?"

"Because there's no motherfucking _point_ , you sack of metal! What the fuck do you care what I do? What have _you_ been doing, for Christ's sake? I looked everywhere for you! Where the _fuck_ have you been?"

The Terminator said, "I have been taking care of my family."

That was too much. I stomped up to him and dug my fingernails into his cheekbones and dragged his face down to mine and screamed in it. For minutes I screamed my throat raw, wordless. Afterwards I couldn't speak.

Calmly the Terminator wiped my flecks of spittle from his cheek. "But I think it would be better for me to take care of you. I will call and tell them I am not coming home. May I use your phone?"

"I am going to get a gun," I informed him, and left the house. I didn’t know where the nearest gun store was; I had made it a point not to know things like that. So I drove to Walmart, shaking all the while, and purchased a Remington 770 because they only sell hunting rifles at Walmart and it was the cheapest one on deck and I’m not made of money, I’m a waitress for Christ’s sake. Then I drove home. When I got there the Terminator was sitting in my only chair, which is a salvaged tattered thing with a hideous yellow floral print and a missing leg. I shot him five times in the chest, but in my haste I'd forgotten to buy additional magazines, once again like some kind of fucking amateur. He just sat there and looked at me.

What the hell was I supposed to do? Terminators aren't exactly easy to destroy, you know. In the end I put the gun on the counter and just went to bed. I guess I thought maybe I was dreaming. I lay awake for a long time, listening, but the Terminator in the living room was immobile, soundless.

* * *

_March 23, 2019_

When I awoke this morning the motherfucker was still there. And get this. He'd scrambled me eggs. With cheese in them.

"I'm not eating that," I said.

"They'll go to waste." He slid them from the pan onto one of my cracked old dishes and pushed the dish across the counter. Christ, they smelled good.

"They _wouldn't_ have gone to waste if you hadn't goddamn cooked them," I said. "I paid for those eggs."

"I'll buy you more," said the Terminator.

"Don't!" I said, alarmed.

"I'll go to the store while you're at work," he said. I saw that he was making a grocery list on the back of an old receipt. "What else would you like?"

"Get out of my house!"

The Terminator wrote down _orange juice_. "And new dishes," he said.

"I'm buying another gun on my way home."

I stomped out and went to the diner. Shitty day, couldn't focus, spilled coffee on two different dumbasses, hardly any tips. On my way home at dusk I actually did stop by the Walmart, but it seemed so fucking stupid to waste the cash on another gun, you know? It's not like the first one did any damn good. In the end I just bought new dishes. What? I got the cheap sturdy kind, from one of those Walmart brands. In turquoise. Listen, it's bad enough having a fucking Terminator in your house without having him give you shit for the state of your dishes.

I drove right past my damn house when I got home. Didn't recognize it. You know why? He'd power-washed it.

And when I got inside I saw he'd done the inside, too. He'd vacuumed, and there were all these cleaning solutions on the coffee table that had _not_ previously been in my house. Pine Sol, and Windex, and I don't know what all. He'd scrubbed and wiped and polished and tidied like nobody's business, least of all _his_. And the house smelled good. Rich and warm and a little spicy, with notes of coriander and paprika.

He came out of the kitchen wearing an orange fucking apron. It had a picture of a frying pan on it and the words MAN WITH A PAN printed over the pocket. "I made pork roast," he said. He spotted my bag. "Is that the gun? Please don't put bullet holes in my new apron. I just bought it."

I couldn't tell him it was new dishes. I just couldn't. I ran and hid the bag in my room. I wasn't going to come out and eat his fucking pork roast, but later on I heard him leave the kitchen and I was just so hungry. I snuck down. He'd left a plate out for me, covered in tinfoil.

It was so good.

* * *

_March 24, 2019_

He's still here.

What? What the hell am I supposed to do about it?

I did eventually put the dishes in the kitchen cabinets. He didn’t say anything about it.

* * *

_March 29, 2019_

Terminator still here. Get this. He wants me to call him Carl. I told him I’m never gonna fucking call him Carl.

Then he said, “Can I at least have the guest room?”

“Doesn’t look like I can stop you,” I drawled. He’s been here two weeks, for Christ’s sake. If I could kick him out or figure out how to murder him, I would’ve done it by now.

The Terminator regarded me with that bland, unsettling expression of his.

“Fine,” I said. “Take it. No one else is using it anyway.” Then I was so disgusted with myself I hid in my room until it was time to go to work. Letting a Terminator live in my house? The Terminator who killed John? What would John think? Or Kyle?

No. Can’t think of that. Better to put my head down and get through it. I went to work. The Terminator had left a lunch box by the front door with granola bars and a juice carton in it. I left it there.

At work my boss said, “You’ve been looking cheery lately, Sarah. Got a new man in your life or what?”

“I am _not_ cheery,” I snapped. Later on I broke a whole tray of mugs on purpose.

* * *

_April 2, 2019_

The Terminator redid the guest room. Put up new wallpaper and drapes. Asked if he could do my room, too. Sure. Whatever.

* * *

_April 3, 2019_

Can’t sleep. Thinking about John. Thinking about the Model 101 that protected him. I know it only protected him because it had been programmed that way. But I can’t stop thinking about how John cried when it died. I mean kicked the bucket. Melted. Whatever.

Died.

I’m going for a walk.

_Later:_

Damn Terminator tried to stop me going for my walk!!! Said it’s twenty degrees outside and I’ll catch my death!!! I prevented a superintelligent AI from starting a nuclear apocalypse; I think I can handle a little brisk weather. He said I should at least bring my coat and I told him to go fuck himself. Walked for an hour just to give him what for. Hmph.

* * *

_April 4, 2019_

Woke up with a 102-degree fever. Goddammit.

* * *

_April 5, 2019_

Still sick. Terminator has been bringing me chicken soup and ginger ale. I think he makes the soup himself from scratch, the bastard.

* * *

_April 6, 2019_

Slept most of the day and woke up to the Terminator sitting in a chair by the window, silhouetted by the white light from the street lamps. Shit like this is why I never should've gotten rid of my guns.

I fumbled for the Remington 770 under the bed, but I still felt like crap and that made me sluggish. By the time I had a good enough grip to point it threateningly at him, the Terminator was already talking. It’s bad enough when he’s silent, for Christ’s sake.

He said, “Why didn’t you answer my text messages?”

“That’s why you’re sitting there like James Bond? I told you. There was no point.”

“There would have been a point if you had answered them.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“People died,” the Terminator said. “The Rev-9 in Piscataway killed four people. There were other Terminators, too. Los Angeles. Vancouver. Anchorage. Bangor. Havana –”

“First of all, with my background, I could never have gotten to Havana,” I told him. I put the gun back under the bed and rolled over to go back to sleep.

“Sarah,” said the Terminator.

Robots. I rolled the other way. Now I was facing him, not that it did me any damn good what with the streetlights. “Why didn’t _you_ take care of the Terminators, if you care so much?”

“I was taking care of my family.” He might as well have put a hot knife in my throat. “They were my purpose. I wanted to give you your own –”

“You had no right.”

“I expected you to kill them in John’s memory. To avenge him. That was why I put that in the messages: _For John_.”

“I got that, you dumb excuse for an I-beam. If you wanted to help me avenge John so bad, why didn’t you let me kill you, huh? You don’t think I was doing enough for John? You don’t think every breath I take is for John? You think I needed your fucking _guidance_ , your _surveillance_ , your busy-body _meddling_ to remember my _son_?”

I don’t think Terminators are capable of faltering, but he did pause. Hesitated, even. “I wanted to help you.”

“You could have _asked_ me!”

“You would not have listened.”

“It doesn’t matter. You still could have asked.” I licked my lips. My heart scrambled in my chest like a small animal. My fingers were twitching. My stomach was a yawning, empty thing – no nausea, no anger, no guilt, only darkness. “You murder my son, you leave me screaming on the beach, you disappear for decades, and then you harangue me for years via anonymous text messages dredging up the worst – the worst thing – the _only_ thing.... You had no right, Carl. You could have fucking _asked_.”

The Terminator said nothing about the fact that I had called him Carl, which was good, because if he had I would have had to find a bridge and throw myself off it.

He said, “I am asking you now.”

I rolled over yet again. I put my head under the covers.

The Terminator did not move.

After a long time, a very long time, after my heart rate had slowed somewhat and the darkness in my belly had ebbed – not all the way, but a little bit – and I was able to detach my teeth from the inside of my cheek, I said to the Terminator through the quilt, “I want some more of that chicken soup.”

* * *

_April 13, 2019_

A week went by. The Terminator kept cleaning my room and making me soup and fetching TheraFlu from the drugstore. After a couple of days I was able to totter around on my own again, and then to go back to work. We did not speak again of the conversation, or the fact that the Terminator had stationed itself in my room like a huge creep and watched me sleep – until I got home from work one day, and he was sitting motionless in the floral yellow armchair in the front room, facing the doorway, obviously waiting for me like a giant fucking weirdo.

I slowed and eyed him warily. “What do you want? I guess you’re not lying in wait to shoot me or you’d have done it by now.”

“I am sorry,” the Terminator said.

Christ, that was the last thing I needed. “Don’t say shit like that.”

“I am sorry I killed John. I am sorry for the text messages.”

“You can’t feel remorse,” I said, desperate to steer the conversation to literally anything else, preferably silence. “You’re a robot.”

“I am sorry I violated your privacy. I am sorry I trespassed into your home. I will le–”

“Please stop,” I said. “I hate this feelings shit. Did you make dinner? I’m starving.” And then I realized he’d been about to say that he was going to leave.

Well, of course. He was going to go back to his real family. _He_ had one to go back to. He’d said and done whatever bullshit he’d came here to do. He didn’t _want_ to be here with me. And I didn’t want him either. He was a Terminator, for Christ’s sake. He’d killed my son. It didn’t matter that he had changed since then, grown a conscience or whatever, cleaned my house, cooked my meals, nursed me when I was sick. Fuck this. Fuck all of it, honestly.

The Terminator said, slowly, “I made grilled cheeses.”

“Great,” I said. “Great. You gonna pack up your things now?”

The Terminator looked at me. He looked around the room. Into the doorway to the kitchen. At the moldy old carpet, the beat-up furniture, the peeling wallpaper. No wonder he wanted to leave.

The Terminator said, “I would like to hang new drapes in this room.”

“...What?”

“I would like to hang new drapes in this room,” he repeated. “I think this room could use a bold color. Maybe a nice crimson. What do you think?”

“Sounds hideous,” I said.

“Perhaps we can discuss it over dinner.”

“Okay,” I said. The Terminator nodded. He got up creakily from the armchair and followed me into the kitchen.

* * *

_May 3, 2019_

The Terminator got his way. New drapes, new wallpaper, hardwood flooring in the front room. Turned out he ran a drapery business with his old family. The thought still makes me a little sick.

“You’ll have to go back to them eventually,” I said to him once.

“No,” he said. “Not unless you ask me to leave. Are you asking me to leave?”

Right. Like I was going to answer that.

“I told them that one day I would have to go,” the Terminator said placidly. “I thought it would be for something different. But I am happy that it was for this.”

We’re going to redo the kitchen next.

* * *

_May 28, 2019_

“You seem better,” my boss said to me this morning. Then he winced as he remembered what had happened last time he’d told me that. “You got a new... I mean... therapist?”

“ _Bob_ ,” said one of the other waitresses.

I didn’t deign to answer. But maybe that wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe later I would run it past Carl.

* * *

_November 1, 2019_

So, get this: Couple of lesbians showed up on the porch this morning with the latitude and longitude of my house tattooed on one of their stomachs. And let me tell you, they looked like they’d been through the wringer.

“I was told that he could help me,” the one gasped, pointing at Carl. She was blond, athletic, and covered with oddly symmetrical scars. Her companion was Mexican, pretty in a straightforward sort of way. “Please. You have to help me.”

“I don’t know anything about this,” Carl assured me in his flat monotone. To the women: “Would you like to come inside for a beer?”

“Hey,” I said. “it’s _my_ house.”

Carl said accusingly, “You said that you would add me to the title.”

“You think I know how to do that? I just said that to get you to shut up.”

We argued about it as the women came in and settled themselves on the loveseat, glancing around with a too-familiar blend of awkwardness and suspicion. Carl got them some beers.

The blond woman was from the future. Cyberwarfare AI, nuclear apocalypse, human resistance, etc. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

“You have to help me save Dani,” the blond woman said desperately. “Please. The future needs her. She leads the Resistance. She’s – she’s it. She’s all I have. All we have, I mean.”

Yeah, okay, sister. I’ve seen the way you look at her and there’s no _we_ about it.

And once I learned that this young woman, Dani, was the leader of the Resistance, I couldn’t stop looking at her, either. She was John. I mean, she wasn’t, of course. She wasn’t my son. My heart, my bone marrow, my blood still ached so badly for my son. This woman wasn’t _my_ John.

But she was Grace’s John. She was John for dozens of people, hundreds, maybe thousands, in a desolate future that needed her. A future that now needed Grace too. That needed Carl. That needed me.

The Terminator looked at me. “It is your choice,” he said.

I gazed around at my freshly remodeled house, at the kitchen that currently smelled of Carl’s lasagna, out the window at the humid New Orleans street. My home. A place where, finally, I had learned to be – not safe, not happy, but comfortable, maybe. A place where, at last, I could sleep through the night.

But I didn’t need the place. I didn’t need the furniture or the new drapes or the kitchen soup or even the gun. Somewhere along the line, this beat-up old Terminator had managed to give me that. Now maybe I could give it to someone else.

“We’ll do it,” I said, with finality. “For John.”

“For Sarah,” Carl said.


End file.
